9: Oh Friend, You’ve Left Me Speechless
The holidays had ended on a somber note, despite Emile’s fantastic news that she was 3.5 months pregnant with Kanye’s baby and they were making plans to get married. Zooey just couldn’t find it in herself to be as ecstatic as she should have been, as the feelings she was forming for Justin were taking over her consciousness. She thought about him throughout Christmas and the New Year, desperately wanting to call him just to see what he was doing, just wanting to hear his voice. But she knew that he was with his wife, and that was something she shouldn’t even think to intrude upon.
So she returned to LA, unsure of whether Justin was back yet, but knowing that she needed to focus on other things. Like her job. Over the two weeks she was away, she talked to her dad a lot “ about her future, in particular “ and he encouraged her to follow her instincts.
More than anything, she knew that reaching her goals was a process, and her only choice was to take one step at a time, so logically, she opted for the next rung on her ladder “ she wanted to be a producer on The Office. It was a prestigious position, and something that a writer of her experience could realistically only dream of, but she figured she was getting more experience with every word she wrote, and it couldn’t hurt to at least ask.
So that second Monday in January, Zooey got up bright and early and went in to work at a time where only the executive producers were on set, hoping that she wouldn’t be intimidated by the big wigs. Luckily, the first person she ran into was the person she felt most comfortable with, the show’s co-creator, Greg Daniels.
“Greg, can I talk to you?” she requested, seeing him headed down the hallway just a few feet ahead of her.
“Zooey,” he turned, a bit surprised to see one of his writers in so early. “Hey. Welcome back.”
“Thanks.” They gave one another a slight and awkward New Year’s embrace as they continued down the hall. “Hard at work, I see.”
“Never stops,” he commented, guiding her into his office. “Shut the door, have a seat.”
Nervous, she did as told and fell into the chair across from her boss, wondering how she was gonna let these words come out of her mouth.
“What’s on your mind, Zooey?”
“Well… okay,” she grinned uneasily. It was not in Zooey’s nature to be nervous about… anything, but there she sat, on the verge of shaking and crying, almost terrified as to what his response would be. “I know I haven’t been here very long. Like, two years is nothing, really, but… I think I’ve done well. I think my work is good--.”
“It is,” Greg assured her, gazing at her stoically.
“And, well… I want to become a producer for the show. And I hope you’ll tell me what I need to do to make that happen.”
He sighed in a way that said he was annoyed but still attempting to find a way to be diplomatic. “Zooey…”
“I hope I’m not overstepping my boundaries…”
“What do I have to do for you?” he frowned at her, sitting back in his big leather desk chair.
“I don’t feel like it’s unrealistic, I’m just asking what I need to do…”
“Jesus, Zooey, every time I turn around, you have your hand in my pocket,” he snapped. “You want a job, you want a raise, you want a different job, you want a different office. Who do you think you are? Mindy? You walk in here straight off of Harvard’s campus and think you’re the hottest shit we’ve ever seen?”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” she blubbered out. “I-I-I just want a chance”.”
“No, you’re saying you want more. Something else, on top of the tons of other favors I’ve done for you.”
“I didn’t know--.”
“You need to put your nose down and focus on your work, because there’s not one thing you’ve done here that I can’t live without,” he told her bitingly. “You’re good, Zooey. Get better. Stop asking for shit.”
Zooey was completely stunned and hurt by his words, but determined not to allow her boss to witness her crying, she nodded in understanding and stood from her chair, extending her hand. “Thank you for your time, Greg.”
He curtly returned the handshake and watched her leave, instructing her, “Shut the door on your way out, please.”
As soon as she made it into the hallway, she burst into tears “ something she wasn’t yet accustomed to “ and fell into the wall behind her. She was so used to being strong at work, indignant even, because her colleagues looked at her as a spoiled brat who had things handed to her, but never once did she think that their judgments of her were fair... until now. She thought maybe that was just how they treated the new kid on the block, but if her own boss believed that this job had been spoon-fed to her, how the hell would she ever be able to convince anyone else otherwise?
“Hey, kid.” A female voice interrupted her sobs and Zooey looked up to find her self-professed mentor, Mindy Kaling, staring down at her. Mindy, one of the shows many talented writers, and the face of Office character, Kelly Kapoor, was holding her Starbucks cup in one hand while offering the other to Zooey to help her off of the floor. “What’s cookin’, good lookin’?”
Zooey gave her a small smile, as Mindy was the only writer that hadn’t really treated her like shit in the two seasons she had been there. “Nothing,” she lied, not wanting to seem like even more of a spoiled brat.
“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” Mindy submitted her warm, childlike grin. “Why you cryin’, boo?”
“Greg just kinda… yelled at me… I dunno,” she sniffled. “It’s not a big deal. I’m on my period, I’m emotional right now.”
“Oh, well Greg’s on his too,” she joked, dismissing his current attitude, “we just got word that Steve isn’t renewing his contract.”
Zooey could only blink at her, not knowing what else to say or do with that news. When the inimitable star of your show leaves, doesn’t that mean your… show leaves, too? “I’m sorry, what?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry… Steve, as in Carell?”
“Yeah. Michael Scott has given us his ‘one more season’s notice.”
Zooey felt a whole new batch of tears coming up, so she dropped her head, watching them fall to the floor. “Fuck.”
“Right.”
“What’s… gonna happen?”
“We don’t know yet,” she shrugged, her usually chipper voice thick with melancholia. “Ideally, we go on without him, but worst case scenario, season seven is it for us.”
Zooey calculated everything in her head, knowing that they only had three more episodes of the current season left, and only rewrites on that, so that meant possibly only twenty-two more scripts to do. This show had become her life over the past few years… what was happening? “Oh, my god.”
“Hey,” Mindy stared at her from underneath a Red Sox cap. “Whatever happens, you will be fine, okay? You’re good. You’ll be on another show in no time.”
Several images flashed into her mind, none of which included her being a staff writer on an uber-successful show on a network that had money to actually pay her. In fact, most of the images she conjured up involved her standing at the corner of Hollywood & Highland, dressed as Keira Knightley’s character from Pirates of the Caribbean. “I wish I knew that were true,” she finally supplied shakily. Zooey was not used to this feeling of uncertainty and insecurity. 2010 had definitely not begun on a good note. “God.”
“Zooey, you know you’re good. Whatever happened with Greg, whatever happens with Steve, it doesn’t mean anything except new opportunity. Okay?”
Zooey nodded, and even though she grasped the concept, she still didn’t know how she was supposed to just accept what was happening. Her job, her livelihood, her passion was crumbling right before her eyes, and she couldn’t pretend she was okay with that.
“Do you need to take the day off?” Mindy wondered, knowing that her apprentice was still inwardly panicking.
“No, I’ll be fine.” There was no way in hell she was taking days off when there might be a shortage of them sooner than later.
Even though she wanted to scream for mercy, she just took a deep breath, attempted to collect herself as quickly as possible, and decisively moved on with her day. As Justin said on their Christmas flight, looking for quick fixes and instant gratification was no way to live. This would all be all right. Right?
____________________
The day came to a slow close and Zooey found herself nearly drowning by then, mostly in her own thoughts. She didn’t want anyone to know she was cracking, but the pressure really did seem to be suffocating her as she sat in the writing room, pretending to be paying attention, pretending to care about Michael Scott’s affair with a married woman, or Dwight dumping Angela and their baby contract. None of it mattered to Zooey, because all she wanted was to run from that fucking stuffy conference room and never look back.
And as soon as the proverbial bell rang on her work day and she was unleashed from their last meeting, Zooey raced to her office to grab her things and headed out of the building as fast as her size seven feet would carry her.
The first thing she did was call Justin, too unnerved to really worry about whatever awkwardness they’d left lingering on their Christmas morning flight.
“Hello?” he answered, dazed by the traffic in front of him. He knew he shouldn’t have answered, as his Bluetooth wasn’t in the vicinity, but when he saw who was calling, he couldn’t help but pick up.
“Hey. It’s me.”
“I know,” he resisted the urge to smile. “Happy New Year.”
“Yeah. Are you in LA?” she asked, hurriedly.
“Yeah…”
“Are you busy?”
“Are you all right?” he wanted to know first. It wasn’t like her to cut to the chase, there was always sarcastic banter to throw around before she actually said what was on her mind.
“I’m feeling crazy right now, but I’m… okay. I just… I need to see you.”
Over the holiday, he made a quiet resolution to let his relationship with Zooey kind of dwindle away, as he began to feel things that he shouldn’t as a married man. Their Christmas flight to New York had ignited something he wasn’t ready for, and instead of putting himself in a terrible position, one that he wouldn’t be able to get out of, he thought it best to try and keep his distance from her. But at that moment, none of that really stopped him from wanting to be there for her.
“O…kay,” he relented hesitantly. “Where are you?”
“I’m on my way home. Or wherever you need me to go,” she sighed, leaving the lot of her now-temporary job.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
Justin quickly swerved out of his current lane on Sunset so that he could head the opposite way and hit Franklin Avenue in order to head toward Zooey’s area of Hollywood. “Okay, I’m on my way to your house. How long will you be?”
Relieved that she could rely on him in her hour of need, she let out another sigh. “Thank you so much,” she relayed sincerely. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
All I know is that you’re so nice
You’re the nicest thing I’ve seen
Twenty minutes later, Zooey pulled up to her charming casa in Los Feliz, pleased that Justin was there waiting, leaned sexily against his Audi, playing with his BlackBerry.
“Hey,” he smiled sheepishly, removing his William Rast sunglasses from his face.
Zooey, who had spent much of her day in tears, reluctantly removed her own sunglasses to reveal her puffy red face and heartbroken green eyes. “Hey.”
“You scared the hell out of me, you know.”
“How did I do that?” she attempted a smile, leading him up her driveway to the front of her home.
“The urgency in your voice, it was… alarming.”
It only mirrored what she had been feeling, she thought. She was uneasy, she felt panicked and unstable, not only about her job, but about the fact that Justin was the only person in the world she felt like sharing those feelings with. A married man. What was happening to her? “Sorry,” was all she could muster up in response.
I wish that we could give it a go
See if we could be something…
As they entered her tidy home, he watched her drop her purse to the floor and then fall into her sofa as if the day had kicked her ass. “So what’s up?” he had to know.
“Today was terrible,” she confirmed as she slowly removed her leather jacket and flung it over the nearest armrest. “Fuck today.”
He followed her lead, taking off his own jacket and sitting on the couch at the opposing end from her. “What happened today?”
“Well… my boss basically said that my spoiled ass was lucky to have a job, and then two minutes later, I find out that Steve Carell is leaving after next season.”
“Okay.” Justin sat back in his seat, digesting the news for her and nodded slowly. “So?”
“’SO?’” she repeatedly loudly. “What do you mean, ‘SO?!’”
“I mean… who cares what your boss thinks. You still have a job, right?”
“For now, yeah.”
“So what’s the big deal? I mean, Steve leaving kind of sucks, but that is the nature of Hollywood. You can’t be big forever.”
“Well not if we go by your résumé,” she mumbled jealously.
“You can’t go by my résumé,” he smirked. “I’m a lucky son of a bitch.”
“No fucking kidding.”
“But here’s the thing,” he went on to add, knowing that his simple words wouldn’t resonate with someone as stubborn as Zooey. “You, my dear, are a rare commodity in this business. You are not only funny, but you’re dangerously intelligent and excruciatingly attractive in an approachable way. There’s no way in hell you’re not going to be able to do whatever you want in this town.”
Zooey gave him a small smile, feeling very bashful as she marveled that such a simple statement could be so healing and thrilling and unsettling, all at once. “What are you doing to me?”
“I’m serious, Zo. If only all hilarious women could look like you.”
“Your wife isn’t hilarious?” she stupidly brought herself out of the moment to remind it that his wife even existed.
Justin looked at her for a long time, not wanting to say she wasn’t, but… well. “My wife doesn’t look like you,” he noted quietly.
I wish I was your favourite girl
“Why are you married?” she wondered sadly, again, resisting the urge to cry uncontrollably.
“Because I fell in love.”
And that did it. Zooey felt her cheeks flush, her eyes well up with tears, and they came spilling onto her face in an embarrassing rush of honesty.
I wish you thought I was the reason you were in the world
I wish my smile was your favourite kind of smile
I wish the way that I dressed was your favourite kind of style
“Zooey…”
“I’m sorry. I’m a fucking wreck right now.”
“It’s okay,” he replied, avoiding her tear-filled face.
“Have you ever wanted something so much that it hurt? Like, to the point where you needed it?”
He nodded, knowing full well that they were way past discussing her situation with work.
“What do you do about it?”
He knew that it was a bit of a rhetorical question, but he thought it only fair to respond some way. He didn’t want to leave her sad words hanging in the air. “I dunno,” he finally said, feeling just as gloomy about the situation.
I wish you couldn’t figure me out
But you’d always wanna know what I was about
If anything, it was clear that he was in the same boat she was. Conflicted, contrite, but unwavering in his feelings. At the very least, she thought, they were in this together. It wasn’t unrequited, this was no lopsided crush. They had mutual feelings for one another that they couldn’t do much of anything about.
“I’m sorry, I suck at cheering people up,” he glanced back at her, realizing that she was still crying.
But she didn’t care. She was just glad that he was there, not looking towards the door, looking for an escape route. He was there, with her, in the thick of it, not leaving. She pulled her legs up onto the couch with her, contorting into a crosslegged position as she wiped at her face. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m doing this to you.”
I wish you’d hold my hand when I was upset
I wish you’d never forget the look on my face when we first met
“You’re not doing anything. We’re friends. You can… confide in me whenever you want to.”
Friends. That dreaded word. “I have enough friends. I don’t wanna be your friend,” she blurted out, hating the sound of her own voice as she heard it.
Basically, I wish that you loved me
“Well… I am married, so there’s not much else we can be.”
I wish that you needed me
She nodded quickly as another few frustrated tears slid down her face. “I know.”
I wish that you knew when I said two sugars, actually I meant three
“Zooey, I’m not… equipped to handle this.”
“I know.”
“So what are we gonna do?”
“I don’t know.”
It was all too much. There he sat, with this infinitely awesome woman at his side “ a woman that wasn’t his wife “ and all he was thinking of was finding a way to make her smile. He wanted to hold her hand and tell her that it would all be all right. He wanted to envelope her and kiss her and assure her that nothing mattered, so long as they had one another, but there it was. The simple fact was that they didn’t have each other. They had the moment and the moment was wrong for every reason imaginable. What was he supposed to do?
“I should go,” he announced when his thoughts became overwhelming.
“Do you really have to go?” she requested, even more saddened by the notion of being alone with her own thoughts.
He nodded, standing up to put on his jacket.
She stood as well, tempted to take his hand and make him stay. Instead she just walked him to the door. “I appreciate you coming by.”
Knowing that he shouldn’t have, he only blushed in response. “Everything will be all right,” he promised, not really sure whether that was true.
“You don’t know that,” she read his mind, gazing into his pools of sad blues. “Do you?”
He shook his head and slowly lowered his head. What was he doing? Her head began to raise and then tilt, eventually colliding with his softly. They were cheek to cheek, then nose to cheek, then nose to nose. They both held still for a moment, just listening to the other breathing nervously, and it seemed like an eternity was passing. But then his bottom lip to grazed her top one and it took only a millisecond for their mouths to squarely find one another, their lips parted.
I wish that without me, your heart would break
I wish that without me, you’d be spending the rest of your nights awake
I wish that without me, you couldn’t eat
Yeah, I wish I was the last thing on your mind before you went to sleep
As they kissed, Justin’s mind went completely blank. In that second, anything and everything outside of her quiet abode didn’t exist. There was no Scarlett, no wedding, no ring on his finger, nothing but his attraction to Zooey, demanding that he not stop.
Zooey, on the other hand, had a million thoughts swirling around her overstuffed brain. She knew, more than anything, that this could signify the beginning of the end once his conscience took over, and she could feel the sting of more tears as she imagined not being able to see him anymore after this. Regrettably, she pulled away.
“Justin,” she exhaled shakily, wiping her face and her lips.
“Zooey, I am so sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” she countered, backing away from him. “You’re married. This is ridiculous…”
“I’m so sorry,” he repeated, feeling more remorseful with every second that passed. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m sorry.” It was all she could say too, knowing that this was so, so wrong.
“Fuck.” He knew that the fact that he couldn’t help himself spoke volumes to what he was feeling. In six years with Scarlett, he’d never been tempted to even take another girl’s number, much less end up in her home, kissing her. Physicality or not, this was a full-blown affair due to all the feelings he had for this girl. No denying it. “We can’t do this.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I am, too.”
“I have to go.”
“Is our friendship totally fucked?” she wondered out loud, even though she was beginning to realize that they never really had a friendship to begin with. She had feelings for him about two minutes after their first conversation, quite honestly.
“Zooey…”
Look, all I know is that you’re the nicest thing I’ve ever seen
She didn’t want to hear his answer if it was going to be Yes. “Okay, go,” she insisted, quickly swinging her front door open.
“Yeah, I should...”
“Okay.” As more tears streamed down her face, she wondered if that would be the last time she saw him.
And I wish we could see if we could be something
Yeah, I wish we could see if we could be something…
Lyrics: “Nicest Thing” “ Kate Nash (Made of Bricks)
Author's Chapter Notes:
Sorry for the delay, I've been SUPER busy. I'll do my best to update again this weekend! Love you guysss. -Ash
Chapter End Notes:
If you don't know this song, seriously, go download it. It's fantastic!
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